


To Tell A Story

by BlueGirl22



Category: Hamilton - Miranda, Hamilton - Miranda (Broadway Cast) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Gen, I won't abandon this I promise, I'll add more tags as it goes on but this is all that is relevant rn, I'm sorry for the long ass wait for the next chapter but school is Trying To Kill Me, it will just probably update after the winter break, lin is eliza mah friends, rpf isn't usually my thing but this idea wouLDN"T LEAVE ME ALONE so bear with me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:12:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8569123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueGirl22/pseuds/BlueGirl22
Summary: In which Lin-Manuel Miranda is known to be reincarnated, but everyone assumes that he was the wrong Hamilton.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Reincarnation is fairly common in this verse, but not as common as Kookookarli's 177(6) verse (which I would highly recommend btw). Roughly the same number of people have been reincarnated as there are red-heads, so the average person knows a few, but not that many.

Whenever Lin was asked if he was an Old Soul, he would tell the truth and say yes. Upon not revealing who he was, people would make their own assumptions, and he would let them. Time and time again, Lin was baffled at who they thought he was. He thought he had made it pretty damn clear. 

Everyone  _ thought  _ that he had been Alexander.

Lin just didn’t get how they didn’t see it. He’d seen a [post ](http://mivyard.tumblr.com/post/141148233789/lin-manuel-is-probably-alexander-hamilton)on Tumblr recently which was a perfect example of why he was confused. It said, “lin manuel is probably alexander hamilton reincarnated bc who else would write a musical about alexander hamilton”. He had heard a few other things to that effect as well. What he didn’t get was why people didn’t see that “Who would write a musical about Alexander Hamilton?” and “Who told his story?” were, in essence, the same question. What Lin didn’t get was why everyone thought he was the wrong Hamilton.  
Everyone thought he had been Alexander, when Lin had tried to make it obvious that he was Eliza.

* * *

 

Lin had always known he was reincarnated. There was never any precise moment of “Revelation” that he heard people talk about. There was never any sudden “Zap! Wow, I remember my name!” or a shocking flood of memories triggered by walking past a former abode. Much later in life, people would ask Lin when he first realized that he was an Old Soul. He would respond that the question was like asking him when he first realized that his name was Lin. He just knew.

He figured that one of the reasons that he loved New York City so much was that, as a child, he always felt like he had a secret with it. Yes, he knew, “how could he have a secret with a piece of land?” but hey, he had been six. When he would walk around the streets, he could pick almost any building, and stare at it until he could remember what it used to look like in the colonial era. He could watch it deconstruct and build from the ground-up before his very eyes. 

Occasionally, a memory would bleed through. Do you know that feeling when you’re sleeping at someone else’s house, and just for a split second, after you wake up, but before you open your eyes, you picture yourself in your own room? Lin would get that a lot, but when sleeping in his own bed. He would picture a room that looked like it was from a museum reconstruction, but everything in it was in pique condition. From the room’s decor, he guessed  he had lived around 1800.

Lin never felt the need to tell anyone about his memories (well, he told his therapist when he was nineteen, but  _ everything  _ came out in those sessions). There was never any reason to. Most Old Souls had just been regular people in their past incarnation, so there would be little glory.

And… there was something else. He had definitely been a girl in his past life. Some of the few memories he had were of dresses, long hair, and a distinctly feminine face looking back at him in the mirror. Very few people changed gender when they reincarnated, so when they did, it was perceived as weird. He figured he didn’t need to bring extra weirdness upon himself.


	2. The Chernow Brick

Lin really should have made a packing list. Vanessa did, so it’s not like it completely escaped his mind, he made made the conscious decision to not make one, because he thought he didn’t need to. This was incorrect. In his defense, he had almost remembered everything. Keyword being “almost”. Upon arriving at the flight gate for he and his wife’s post-  _ In The Heights _ vacation, he realized that he had forgotten one of the most vital objects that all literate humans should have with them at all times: a book.

To rectify this nearly fatal error, he gave Vanessa peck on the cheek, and ran off to try and find a bookstore somewhere in the terminal. That’s how he found himself browsing through the shelves of a place that was the store equivalent of the “Most Read” page of a tabloid website. Two shelves contained books he’d heard of and were respectively labelled “NY Times Bestsellers” and “Critics’ Top Picks”. Then there were some slightly more obscure but harmless enough looking ones on shelves labelled things like “Bestsellers In-Store” and “Sponsored Books of The Month”.

However, the genre sections were by far the most entertaining, due to their ridiculous covers. “Young Adult” boasted a full shelf that was a good 50/50 split between close up photos of teens that were no doubt trying to make an “I’m in love but also badass” face, and pictures of girls in ballgowns. “Biography”’s covers were all dramatic photos of whomever the book was about (or dramatic portrait, depending how long ago the subject lived). “Lifestyle” was a shelf containing a few copies of seven different books, all of which had a picture of papaya in a red ceramic bowl on the front. All told, the shop was more entertaining than useful, but it was better than nothing.

Lin tried to look around the bestsellers to see if he remembered reading any good reviews about any of them, but something in biography kept catching at the corner of his eye. It was like glancing at a page of text and having a word pop out at you, but having to thoroughly read it in order to find it again. He turned toward the shelf and eventually found what had been to so distracting to him. It was a portrait on the cover of a book titled  _ Alexander Hamilton _ , by Ron Chernow. Taking a wild stab in the dark, Lin guessed that the fellow on the cover may just be Alexander Hamilton.

_ Now who was that… oh! _ Lin vaguely remembered hearing about him in his eighth grade U.S. History class. Lin’s memories of him amounted to:

  1. Did something with the Revolution.
  2. Probably wrote some of the Constitution??? Or was he just at the convention??? Misspelled “Pennsylvania”???
  3. Debt? Handled national debt? Made debt go away? $$$ ?
  4. Disagreed with Thomas Jefferson.
  5. He died… somehow. Was it a duel? It could’ve been a duel. Probably a duel. Bang bang shoot shoot y él murió.



 

Lin found that he couldn’t walk away from the book in clear conscience, so he bought it and exited from the ridiculous shop. When Vanessa saw what he’d gotten, she chuckled and teased, “Only you would look at that 700 page monster and think ‘light beach reading’.” He laughed. She had a point. It was odd that he’d been so drawn to the book. 

As they got into their seats, it came to Lin that it might have something to with his past self. He hadn’t thought about her for a while. Maybe she had known Hamilton! It would be cool to have met a historical figure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that not much /actual plot/ happened in this chapter, but bear with me, things are about to happen.


	3. Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that this chapter is as short as actual Hell. I'll try to improve length in future.

It was approximately 3:30 in the morning, and Lin found himself sitting in the empty bathtub of his and Vanessa’s hotel room, fully clothed, and crying. How did this happen? one may ask. Well, there are a few reasons.

He was awake at this ungodly hour of the morning because he had tried to strike a balance between time spent reading and time spent doing normal vacation things. Of course, when I say “strike a balance” I really mean “spend the day doing normal vacation things and reallocate 50% of the time usually used for sleeping to reading”. The book had forcibly taken his psyche captive and refused to let it go until he had finished it.

He was sitting in a bathtub because, when he had realized that he was about to burst into tears, he had fled from the main room where Vanessa was sleeping peacefully, and sought to put a door between them so as to not wake her. Taking refuge in the small bathroom seem to suit this purpose. The bathtub was naturally the most comfortable place to sit.

And he was crying because… because… because a lot of things. First and foremost, he had finished the book. The last section had  _ finally  _ triggered his Revelation. Sure, the events since chapter seven had given a clear enough ring of truth for him to hazard a guess at his being Eliza, but he hadn’t remembered much before reading the epilogue. In a matter of moments, almost a century of memories had come bursting into his consciousness. Saying “it was a lot to take in” is one of the most ridiculous understatements that could possibly be made in any situation, but it needs to be said anyway. It was a lot to take in.

Lin remembered revolution, children, scandal, and loss. Work, importance, influence. Once more:  _ it was a whole bloody lot to take in _ . He figured he could allow himself fifteen minutes of crying over a book in a bath. There was a second reason for the tears as well, but this one was slightly more difficult to explain. Something that dominated the second half of Eliza’s memory was the burning desire and the earth shattering amount of work it took for her and her family to be remembered. 200 years later, Lin would rate the endeavor at only a 50%  success rate. The information was clearly available, as was so well demonstrated by Mr. Chernow’s book, but no one really cared. Most people could hear the name “Hamilton” and only come up with a list of facts similar to Lin’s prior to reading the book. This wasn’t  _ exactly  _ the desired effect.

However, he had a plan to fix this. In this life, he had a certain talent for for writing music. The melodies had started playing in his head many, many chapters ago.  _ Look around, look around…  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without trying to give toooooo much away, do any of you have head canons for other reincarnated hamilcast? I have a few ideas for future chapters, but I always like suggestions.


	4. Simultaneous Emotions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 41 words longer than last chapter. I'm getting better!

Watching  _ Hamilton  _ come together was both ridiculously fulfilling and unfathomably weird, simultaneously. It was fulfilling for all of the obvious reasons; achievement of goal, a sense of completion, not to mention all of the euphoria that is normally associated with getting a show you wrote up and running. And Lin managed to adjust to the weirdness after a little while,  _ but still _ . Imagine writing and performing in a musical about your life, while you play your erstwhile spouse, and someone else plays you flawlessly. 

The eerie perfection of Phillipa Soo was probably the weirdest part of all. Everything she did, right down to her facial expressions as she exited the stage, was about as “Eliza” as one could possibly get. It was fantastic.

However, Lin did have one persisting issue. He had heard about people suddenly gaining new, or very old, mannerisms after a Revelation, but he hadn’t heard anything about this particular habit he’d picked up. Lin had started to respond to “Eliza” as well as “Lin”. He had eventually managed to stop whipping his head around every time someone sang the name, but he couldn’t stop himself from perking up when it came up in conversation. Once again, he really didn’t get that no one had yet figured out who he had been. 

Every now and then, he would wonder if anyone Eliza had known had been reincarnated too, but he would stop himself before any serious fantasy could take hold. He knew perfectly well that almost no one found people they had known in their past lives, and thinking about it was a good way to get yourself worked up over nothing.

* * *

 

It was November 2015, and Lin was packing up to go home after a show. He was just throwing something into his backpack and grabbing his jacket when a rogue Pippa Soo appeared in the doorway to his dressing room. She was wearing a bright red coat and a knit hat with a bobble on top. Knocking on the door frame after already having been noticed, she said “Hey, if you got a second, I’ve got something I want to mention.”

Laying his jacket back over the back of the chair in front of him, Lin nodded for her to go on. There was a pensive air about her, and he wondered if there was something grave.

Upon seeing her friend’s face go into Serious Mode, Pippa burst into giggles. After a moment, she regained her composure. “Sorry, you just seemed so serious. I only wondered if we should talk to Anthony about about all the dabbing he’s doing on stage. It’s all turning into dabography.”

Lin relaxed. “Nah, give it a while. Either he’ll wear out of it, or his arms will fall off.” he shrugged, “Whichever happens first.”

Pippa nodded. “‘Kay.” and hoisted her purse onto her shoulder. She turned as if about to leave, but her head ducked back into the room for a moment and chirruped, “Oh, and Eliza?”

Lin looked up without thinking. “Yeah?”

There was a beat of silence. Lin could hear the clock tick. 

The red-clad woman grinned. “Gotcha.” and swooped out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, and feel free to talk about any reincarnated hamilcast head canons.  
> (shameless self promo) hmu on tumblr @actually-samirah!


End file.
